Local Legends: First, The Man from Catskill

Many folks have written suggesting I start a new Neutral Corner segment that features local legends, boxing dignitaries who have brought the bright lights to the Capital Region.

Mike Tyson cast such a huge shadow that we forget that local boxing existed before 1990. But go back and you’ll find names like Billy Costello, Danny Ferris, Dave Zyglewicz and, of course, Jose Torres, Kevin Rooney, Teddy Atlas, and Brian Kenny. We could go on and on – and we will.

Let’s start at the beginning (a very fine place to start, as Rodgers & Hammerstein said). Arguably the most famous, respected – revered, even – man in boxing worked his magic just a few miles away from where you’re likely reading this. If we were to begin with anyone other than Cus D’Amato, the injustice and disrespect would probably tear a hole in the universe.

I was at Cus’ Catskill Gym with my kids last Saturday and spent some time with Billy White, former Cus protégé. You can’t be there without thinking of Cus. The walls talk, and the language is newspaper clippings and photos. It was fun just watching my young son and daughter absorb it all.

”Sometimes I’ll be here by myself and I can feel his presence,” White says, “like if I turn around, he’ll be standing there.”

Constantine D’Amato came to the Capital Region 40 years ago this year. He traveled north from his home in New York City after selling his Gramercy Gym where he’d trained greats like Rocky Graziano, Buster Mathis and Floyd Patterson. His refusal to bow to the mob-controlled International Boxing Club led him to flee north. “I wasn’t paranoid,” he said later. “I just assumed they would hurt me if they could, and I acted accordingly.”

D’Amato also wanted to simplify his life a bit. He wanted to help troubled kids and bring their lives the kind of focus boxing demands. “It sure worked,” White says, a point easily lost in the misfortune of Tyson. “People forget that when he joined The Team, Mike was in control. It wasn’t until he left Cus for Don King that he unraveled.”

Cus and his lifelong companion, Camille Ewald, lived a few short miles from the gym, in a house filled with his fighters who, in exchange for chores, would receive training at the feet of the master revered by Muhammad Ali and so many others.

Kevin Rooney once told me that Cus was the most honest man he ever knew. If memory serves, I think Kevin said, “If he ever told a lie his tongue would fall out,” pointing to his mouth. And if you ever told him a lie…” Rooney paused here and thought better of the unthinkable, “Well, you just wouldn’t, that’s all.”

Born in 1908 in New York City, D’Amato grew up as one of five brothers and learned to fight in the streets. It was there he learned a valuable truth about fear. To a fighter, it can be a good thing, an instrument to be harnessed and used to advantage. “

“Fear makes a fighter move faster, be quicker and more alert. Heroes and cowards feel exactly the same fear. Heroes just react to it differently. Boxers have to learn that.” And Cus would teach them.

“On the morning of a fight,” he would say, “a boxer wakes up and says, ‘How can I fight? I didn’t sleep at all last night.’ What he has to realize is the other guy didn’t sleep either.”

Cus also taught his fighters something I’ve heard White and Rooney say a hundred times. It’s ingrained in their very personalities, in their way of looking at life: “Will beats skill.” Nine times out of 10, the fighter who wants to win more than the other one, will.

Cus said lots of things. Like all philosopher geniuses, aphorisms tended to just roll off of his mind. Things like:

• “Nature’s a lot smarter than anybody thinks. During the course of a man’s life he develops pleasures and people he cares about. Then nature takes them away one by one. It’s her way of preparing you for death.”
• “Money’s not important. It’s something to throw off the backs of trains.”
• “The punch that knocks a man out is the punch that he doesn’t see. Have you ever seen the pea in the shell game? The man who works the game must have the ability to direct attention to the wrong area. That’s what happens in boxing.”

Mounted on the Catskill gym wall are remnants of a training style that influenced so many fighters – Cus’ “Willies,” padded dummies with numbers spread out on them, each number referring to a particular punch. A boom box plays Cus’ raspy voice hollering combinations by those numbers, “7-2-3,” “7-2-5.” The fighter unloads accordingly.

“It’s hard to appreciate what Cus means to us here,” White says, his voice actually breaking a bit. Just then, as though on cue, a breeze blew open the entrance door that had been left ajar. “When that happens,” White says with a smile, “We just say it’s Cus coming in to make sure we’re not goofing around.”

D’Amato died on November 4, 1985. But if you ask Billy White, he’d say you just have to look inside. Cus is still around.